North Korea ignoring agreement with U.S.

HONG KONG - Less than six weeks after North Korea signed an accord with the Obama administration to limit its nuclear activities, the rogue nation is poised to fire a long-range rocket - raising questions about why the North went to the trouble to negotiate in the first place.

Even more ominous than the launching of the ballistic missile equipped with a satellite, is the likelihood of a follow-up nuclear detonation that may well be a test of a new weapon built with highly enriched uranium.

In moving ahead with the launch of the rocket, which according to reports was being readied with fuel Wednesday, North Korea was in many respects behaving as usual: willfully, without regard for U.N. resolutions, and paying no heed to its biggest patron, China. Just as its former leader, Kim Jong Il, flouted the Bush and early Obama administrations, so is the new leader, his son, Kim Jung Un, defying the Obama White House.

North Korea insists that the launch is for the peaceful purpose of sending a satellite into orbit, but almost universally the test is seen as a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding North Korea refrain from firing rockets using ballistic missile technology.

But the situation looked different Feb. 29.

According to Evans Revere, a former State Department official, "Administration officials have told me that the (North Korea) side understood clearly and accepted the U.S. position that a satellite launch would be violation of the Feb. 29 agreement's ban on long-range missile tests."